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GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

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Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#211

Post by falling »

Duff wrote: post #193
ajross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

The flames die down when people realize that there are design improvements that help them down the road. OS X Finder UI is a mess anyway, so changes that make it easier for non-technical folk are probably net positives. I don't have a good public example in mind, but the users at my employer often flip with volcanic rage when applications are changed -- even godawful VB5 legacy apps. Usually you can discern the "I ha…

> With respect to GMail, when people like pg who get the big picture are saying that the UI sucks, it probably sucks.

this very website proves that that is not necessarily true.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#212

Post by abraham »

ajross wrote: post #43
jdietrich wrote: post #19

It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing. I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width. Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster. U…

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

> Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it.

That isn't a usability disaster. That is a habit/memory disaster.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#213

Post by [deleted] »

Drbble wrote: post #203
ashleyw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go too far with A/B tests, and maybe the Google execs realised that. You just end up with a fragment of your user base who like everything and convert well, and likely a majority who don't (to varying degrees, of course.) To make a 'good' product, you've got to make some tough design and feature choices on your users' behalf. Case in point: Microsoft vs. Apple. Microsoft are well known to test extensively wit…

What is a conversion in Gmail?

[deleted]

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#214

Post by ajross »

abraham wrote: post #212
ajross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

> Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. That isn't a usability disaster. That is a habit/memory disaster.

You say potato, I say potato. To someone who spends their working life in gmail (or whatever) having it suddenly go away, being replaced with a different tool which requires different workflows is certainly a "disaster" in some sense. It's an equivalent annoyance, for example, to losing one's laptop or phone and having to restore a new one from scratch (assuming you have working backups anyway).

What it's not is incontrovertible proof that the new one is "bad". It might be great, but it's still a net loss of productivity while the users learn it.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#215

Post by ashleyw »

Drbble wrote: post #203
ashleyw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go too far with A/B tests, and maybe the Google execs realised that. You just end up with a fragment of your user base who like everything and convert well, and likely a majority who don't (to varying degrees, of course.) To make a 'good' product, you've got to make some tough design and feature choices on your users' behalf. Case in point: Microsoft vs. Apple. Microsoft are well known to test extensively wit…

What is a conversion in Gmail?

A click of an ad. Their ideal user is be somebody who regularly uses the service through the website, rather than mail clients, doesn't use an ad-blocker, and clicks the ads.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#216

Post by pbiggar »

anthonyb wrote: post #82
paul wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As did I, but the defaults shouldn't be awful.

Who says they're awful? You just don't like them. Fair enough that you don't, but putting your opinion forward as fact (like most of the people here and the OP) doesn't really advance the argument. Perhaps a lot of people have trouble finding the compose button on first use?

> Who says they're awful? You just don't like them.

Well yes, but he is the guy who wrote Gmail, and that does add a little bit of strength to his argument.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#217

Post by Zarel »

mthreat wrote: post #15

I totally agree with you. Another specific change that is hard to defend is the new "..." three dots to expand hidden parts of the conversation from previous messages. It used to be text that was clear and large enough to click on. Apparently the Gmail team hasn't learned about Fitts' Law, and the new target is pretty hard to hit with a mouse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

Fitt's law is useful for two insights: The obvious one is that things you want to be easy to click should be large/close, but the less obvious one is that things you don't want to be easy to click should be small/far.

The "..." dots is probably an example of the latter - I'd guess that Google wants people to view entire conversations by expanding the conversation view, not by clicking "...", so they make one way much easier than the other.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#218

Post by rhubarbquid »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #172
kamjam wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find the redesign quite nice. I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it when I first switched to it, I "temporarily reverted back" which helped me "map" the old functionality to the new. Stuff the blogger is ranting about are all easily "fixed" back to the old look and style, but he hasn't gone to the trouble of looking. In fact, the 2nd comment on site tells you how. The demarkation thing, I haven't used the d…

I heavily disliked the new Gmail setup at first. But what it did do was kinda force me into learning all the keyboard shortcuts. (as I still don't know what half the buttons do...) Makes my workflow so much nicer. because of this, I do enjoy gmail even more. (I'm still not a fan, as I can't use my old custom color scheme, but that's another matter)

You can switch from icons to text labels in the settings.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#219

Post by nchlswu »

pork wrote: post #67
nchlswu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Brin took the lead, the design culture inside Google changed. My facts may be slightly off, but Brin essentially gave a lot more freedom to designers. As part of the Google redesign (or +ifying), Brin gave all the design responsibilities to the same division that's been producing some Google's commercials. This is undoubtedly a division that appreciates design more, but arguably doesn't appreciate the data as mu…

Um...Page took the lead, not Brin.

...Oops. Thanks for the correction.

that also explains why my any of my searches failed to come up with any sources. anyways, if anyone wants to go here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/2011/10/more-about-googles-n... it explains some of it. The division I was referring to is Google Creative.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#220

Post by snowwrestler »

adestefan wrote: post #151
mattmanser wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question. If we take what you say is true every redesign is good, which is patently false. A perfect example is the Office Ribbon UI, an unmitigated disaster. Also putting Vista in your list there, mmmmmm. Wasn't exactly a great redesign was it. The Google redesign is also pretty much a disaster.

Am I the only one that actually likes the ribbon? I can actually find the options I want to use in Office 10 instead of trying to dig through dozens of drop down menus.

I love it too; much easier to find features I don't use regularly.

Fair or not, I feel like people who complain about it today (years after it launched) are just announcing, "I'm bad at adapting."

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